


Touch and Go//Acidity

by sharkduck



Category: Fallen Hero Series - Malin Rydén, Fallen Hero: Rebirth (Video Game)
Genre: Fallen Hero spoilers, Gen, Non-Explicit Intimacy, POV Second Person, Spoilers for Fallen Hero: Rebirth, Spoilers for Fallen Hero: Retribution, gender neutral sidestep - Freeform, prose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-11
Updated: 2019-12-11
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:40:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 663
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21753901
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sharkduck/pseuds/sharkduck
Summary: Five times Ortega touches you and the single time you deserved it.
Relationships: Ortega/Sidestep (Fallen Hero)
Comments: 1
Kudos: 16





	Touch and Go//Acidity

The first time he touches you, it's to help you up out of the dirt, smelling like ozone and cinnamon as rough hands grasp and gasp around your wrists when you don't take them, searching little creatures with a yawning hunger and gentle mouths, you pull back.

_I don't deserve it_ is the thought as you snatch away your arms, chemical burns in streaks of orange hidden under old nanomesh like a second skin.

"Easy there, buddy," his mouth moves like a Venus fly trap, enticing the insects of your mind to imagine things that will be but never should have been.

The second time he touches you it's to pull you out of an abyss, too headstrong when you dove in and suddenly you couldn't see the bottom. Eyes blocked by wreckage and twisting metal homages to a rampaging maniac you couldn't beat on your own, and suddenly he was _there._ Hands. Hungry. Searching for injuries (there were several). You told him to stop. (There were several of those too).

_I don't deserve it._

He wouldn't, so damned concerned, hungry hands always looking for contact and only a few layers away from being acid burned by the barcode stitched into your chest.

The third time he touches you it's to hand you a gift. Pressed into your palms, scuffed and whimpering with a secret amount of hunger whenever he's nearby. You muzzle them, force them quiet as they unfurl, a set of plain little earrings soon to be pockmarked with the chemical refuse of your soul. Your first gift and you hold them so gingerly because they _will_ be ruined. Everything you touch becomes sludge. Your first gift. Your eyes well up with acid tears.

_I don't deserve this._

The fourth time he touches you he kisses you ( _finally_ ) and _kisses_ you ( _oh no_ ). And when he pulls back his lips are chapped from drinking vitriol, and you are covered in blood and syrupy sweet ravenous hunger. Berry tasting and bursting like fruit on the tongue, or maybe that's blood, or bile. You don't know. He looks at you like he doesn't care.

_I don't deserve you._

The first time you think you deserve something, you are falling into the fly trap, sharp and bitter glass in your palms and under your skin, letting the acid out when you hit the pavement like you did so many years ago, Ouroboros circles back and here you are again without those calloused, yawning hands to pull you up. The dragon smiles at you with needle teeth as you're stuck in your little beaker again, all the chemicals stuffed back behind glass and rendered pH neutral.

_You deserve this,_ is what you think when they underestimate how strong the chemicals had gotten. Past pH now and into unknown territory, you melt them like candy from the inside out, they fall over like puppets and little toy knights left in vinegar and you are too scared to reach into the toy box and pull out the dragon but maybe someday. _You deserve this you deserve this I will make you **suffer.**_

The last time he touches you and the last time you deserve anything his lips find the acid marked orange on your skin and brush over the scars. He leaves electrical burns in his wake, his hands chew holes in your hips, too bony too sharp too many angles but he still managed to hold on.

_I'm sorry,_ he says and it hurts. _I'm sorry_ he said and it _hurts,_ so, so much. Where you are acid he is base and together maybe you can find somewhere neutral without burning a hole in the universe, except he is already burning a hole in you, behind your eyes, you see him when you sleep and in wandering idle thoughts that make your hands howl to hold his.

_I deserve this I deserve this I deserve this._

Maybe if you repeat it enough times you'll believe it.


End file.
